Still coming "when it's ready"

By Colin Stevens, Jon Ryan

The debut trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 acme at the end of Microsoft's E3 2018 press converence, and developer CD Projekt Red snuck in a full FAQ for their upcoming game, a possible alternate reality game, along with a bunch of download codes for The Witcher 3. The hidden FAQ could be read by combining messages hidden in two frames near the end of the video.

A transcription of the text is as follows:

It’s been over 2077 days since we announced our plan to develop Cyberpunk2077. We released a CGI trailer, gave some interviews and…went dark. Normal procedure for these kinds of things - you announce a game and then shut up, roll up your sleeves, and go to work. We wanted to give you The Witcher 3 and both expansions first, which is why this period of staying silent was longer than we planned. Sorry for that.

As soon as we concluded work on Blood and Wine, we were able to go full speed ahead with CP2077’s pre-production. ut we chose to remain silent. Why? At some point, we made a decision to resume talking about the game only when we have something to show. Something meaningful and substantial. This is because we do realize you’ve been (im)patiently waiting for a very long time and we wouldn’t want anyone to feel that we’re taking this for granted. On the contrary - it gives us a lot of extra motivation. The hype is real, so the sweat and tears need to be real too :).

But, to the point. Today is the day. If you’re seeing this, it means you saw the trailer - our vision of Cyberpunk, an alternative version of the future where America is in pieces, megacorporations control all aspects of civilized life, and gangs rule the rest. And while this world is full of adrenaline, don’t let the car chases and guns mislead you. Cyberpunk 2077 is a true story-driven single player RPG. You’ll be able to create your own character and… well, you’ll get to know the rest from what we show at our booth at E3. Be on the lookout for the previews!

Before we finish, you probably have some questions.

When? When we told you we would only release the game when it’s ready, we meant it. We’re definitely much, much closer to a release date than we were back then :), but it’s still not the time to confirm anything, so patience is still required. Quality is the only thing that drives us - it’s the beauty of being an independent studio and your own publisher.

How Big? Seriously big, but… to be honest, we have no bloody clue at this point in time. Once we put it all together, we will openly ell you what you can expect. And we promise we’ll do this before we start talking about any pre-orders or ask anything of you.

Free DLC/Expansions/DRM? Expect nothing less than you got with The Witcher 3. As for DRM, CP2077 will be 100% DRM free on PC.

Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?

Once again, thank you for your patience. If you have a minute, do visit cyberpunk.net and share your opinion (about anything) with us. We read everything you post and we treat it very seriously.

Yours,

CD PROJEKT RED Team

In addition to this FAQ, a payload at 212.91.11.20 takes you to a site that requires a login. Reddit user u/CookiesW discovered the password NC20 CP77 within the trailer on a license place. Typing this in results in a "connection failed, password expired credential expired" message. More on this possible ARG as the story develops

Lastly, just as it appeared that Microsoft was wrapping up their conference with Head of Xbox Phil Spencer speaking on stage, their monitors and live stream was made to look like it was hacked. In this section of the presentation, various 25-character download codes for their previous hit The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt were displayed on screen.

As of now, it looks like every code has been used and are no longer active on Xbox Live. Other major games were revealed during Microsoft's conference, including Forza Horizon 4 and Gears 5. For more on Cyberpunk 2077, and all your breaking E3 2018 news, keep an eye on IGN.

Colin Stevens is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter - or better yet, follow this ARG.